The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba

by Robin Brown-Lowe

  The charter received its royal assent at the end of September 1889, unbeknown, of course, to Lobengula. Rhodes moved immediately. He sent F.R. Thompson back to Lobengula to insist that the King – who still hadn’t actually accepted the rifles – recognise the Rudd concession in front of witnesses and withdraw previous opposition. Remember, in Lobengula’s mind, we are here still only talking a mining concession.

  Reminiscent of the outcome of Rhodes’ all-night session with Barney Barnato for control of De Beers, Lobengula found himself faced by a united phalanx of white men, the majority of whom had done deals with Rhodes. Lobengula studied them and observed: ‘Tomoson has rubbed fat on your mouths. All you white men are liars, but Tomoson you have lied the least.’ Lobengula gave the acknowledged concession into the safekeeping of the one man in this company whom he trusted, the missionary Robert Moffat, who immediately ‘yielded to Dr Jameson’s earnest importunity and gave it to him, to take away with him’.

  Queen Victoria broke the news in some style to Lobengula that Rhodes was now her chosen man. A party of five officers and men of the Royal Horse Guards in full regalia pitched up in Bulawayo on 15 November carrying a letter which advised the King:

  The wisest and safest course for him to adopt and one which will give least trouble to himself and his tribe, is to agree, not with one or two white men separately, but with one approved body of white men, who will consult Lobengula’s wishes and arrange where white people are to dig … the Queen therefore approves of the concession made by Lo Bengula to some white men who were represented in his country by Messrs. Rudd, Macquire and Thompson.

  Finally, the Queen, overriding Lobengula’s dismissive response to her suggestion of a British representative at his court, nominated Moffat to the post. Moffat had received an advance copy of the letter which he had had time to digest before the guardsmen arrived. He and Jameson decided to doctor it. Rhodes’ name was substituted for some ‘white men’, Jameson not Thompson was named as Rhodes’ principal representative and the reference to the Queen’s representative was simply left out. Moffat himself translated this laundered version to the King. Lobengula was not actually fooled. When the Guardsmen left he told them ‘that the Queen’s letter had been dictated by Rhodes and that she, the Queen, must not write any more letters like that one to him again’. Unfortunately he was so impressed with the Guards’ glittering accoutrements he did not see through to their true colours. The officers commanding the unit had been secretly sizing up Lobengula’s army and advised Jameson that ‘the fighting strength of the Matabele had been underestimated, and that it cannot be reckoned at less than from 15,000 to 20,000 men’ – most of whom were now spoiling for a fight.

  Rhodes was not concerned. He sent the famous scout, Selous, behind the lines to make his own assessment and speeded up his plans for the occupation of Ophir. Selous also arranged some insurance for himself. In an article in the British Fortnightly Review Selous all but named the Mazoe valley in Mashonaland as Ophir, calling it ‘the fairest and perhaps the richest country in all South Africa … an utterly deserted country roamed over at will by herds of eland and other antelope’. What he did not mention was that in September 1889 he had obtained a dubious Mazoe concession from two headmen of the Korekore tribe, the chief, Negomo, having refused him. The paper they signed said they had also never paid tribute, directly or indirectly, to the Portuguese. Let us also not forget that it was Selous who had previously recognised Mashonaland and its gold as a Portuguese sphere of influence.

  When Selous returned to Cape Town in December he offered to sell his concession to Rhodes. The terms were never publicised but one version is that Rhodes gave Selous 100 square miles of Mashonaland under the protective umbrella of the charter and its police force and £2,000 in cash. Selous was thereafter Rhodes’ man and led the Pioneer Column to Ophir, having persuaded Rhodes to follow a route which cleverly bypassed sensitive Matabele kraals.

  Deliberate confrontation with the Matabele – ‘to get it over and done with’ – had been actively considered. In October 1889, E.A. Maund discussed with Jameson the difficulties of occupying Ophir, and concluded that they should employ a kommando of 500 Boers who would be given farms as compensation, ‘and a police of 1,500 to protect the diggers’. Rhodes was obviously behind such a final solution as is revealed in a letter Maund had written to Rutherfoord Harris: ‘I have spoken freely to Helm [another missionary confidant in Lobengula’s court] and Carnegie, and they with Moffat are convinced that Rhodes is right in his decision that we will never be able to work peaceably alongside the natives, and the sooner the brush is over, the better. There is a general idea here that if this advance is not made in the coming winter, the Boer filibusters will make it then, and that will be an additional incubus.’

  On 6 January 1890, Selous independently added his weight to these time constraints in a long letter to the Cape Times. ‘Now or never is the time to act,’ he said to his principals.

  On 7 December, Frank Johnson and an American with experience of the Indian wars, Maurice Heany, signed an agreement with Rhodes to ‘raise in South Africa an auxiliary European force of about 500 men for service under the British South Africa Company.’ With this pocket army they undertook ‘to carry by sudden assault all the principal strongholds of the Matabele nation and generally so as to break up the power of the Amandebele as to render their raids on surrounding tribes impossible, to effect the emancipation of all their slaves and further, to reduce the country to such a condition as to enable the prospecting, mining and commercial staff of the British South Africa Company to conduct their operations in Matabeleland in safety and peace.’ Lobengula was either to be killed or, preferably, taken hostage. This licence to kill had a life of one year and it commanded a suitable reward for its two principals – £150,000 and 50,000 morgen of land. Rutherfoord Harris was the only witness to the agreement.

  Thankfully it was never carried out but the circumstances of its cancellation are shrouded in mystery. Johnson later claimed Heany got drunk and talked to an official who in turn leaked it to the High Commissioner in Cape Town. Rhodes backed away from the plan, called Selous in Kimberley, and agreed the course of non-confrontation. Jameson went personally to Lobengula’s court with a cover story. He told the King that under the terms of the Rudd Concession, a party of miners were coming to dig primarily in the old Tati field on the Missionaries Road. Jameson knew that this well-trodden field would not overly concern Lobengula and he added a codicil that if there was insufficient gold at Tati he wanted permission to move the column of miners to a more promising area.

  Two months later, on 31 January, this transparent ruse worked. Lobengula said a mining caravan could move on to Mashonaland – he even offered labour to help clear the road – and Jameson sped south to make the arrangements. Rhodes had anticipated Jameson’s successful diplomacy. On 10 January he presented the British High Commissioner with the details of the mining party, to be led by Selous: ‘some 80 wagons, accompanied by 125 miners [white] and about 150 [black men] for clearing and making a road for wagons; these with the men for the wagons, would represent all together a body of between 400 and 500; besides these a certain number of mounted police to act as scouts.’ The commander of the Bechuanaland Border Police would provide 200 of his own men and 250 British South Africa Company police would be committed to the protection of the column. The former would remain in Bechuanaland, the latter would stay with the column. After crossing into Matabeleland, the BSAC police would be under the command of its own officers. Military considerations were the responsibility of a close friend of Rhodes, Sir John Willoughby, Bt.

  The British High Commissioner approved. At the meeting Rhodes had been careful to refer to his party as ‘miners’ which appears to have been naively accepted by some (Moffat) and derided by others. Sir John Kirk is recorded as saying: ‘It is a matter of course that we have granted a charter with a view to driving the Matabeles out of the country across the Zambesi and settling the whole country wit
h “volunteers” whose services were paid for by free land grants. Of course this is quite contrary to the provisions and spirit of the charter.’

  Not to mention Lobengula’s concession.

  Everyone knew that Rhodes was assembling in Mafeking a pocket invasion army. Along with the recruits (who had been deliberately enrolled from influential families in the Cape in case the column needed rescuing) came equipment which left nothing in doubt: military-style uniforms, revolvers, rifles, Maxim, Gatling and Nordenfeldt machine-guns and a powerful steam-driven searchlight. The men were formed into three troops, two of mounted infantry, one of artillery. The accompanying police force had been doubled to 500 men and there were now 186 wagons.

  The column crossed into Matabeleland in July and was immediately shadowed by an impi of between 200 and 300 men. Lobengula sent protesting notes to the commander of the military force, Lieutenant-Colonel Pennyfather, ordering him to turn back. Pennyfather replied that he was a servant of the Queen and only she could order him back but he allowed Lobengula’s note to be taken on to Rhodes. This all used up valuable time as the column moved on. The plan had been to form a defensive ring of wagons (a laager) every night but the column was spread out over two miles and this proved impractical. Thereafter, the column was split in two and advanced in parallel, forming a square laager at night. The searchlight was turned on and swept the bush, and explosive charges were laid outside the square and exploded throughout the night.

  In the Cape, Rhodes had become Prime Minister.

  Why did Lobengula not attack, as the majority of his young warriors were urging? The answer is still anyone’s guess. By now the King knew of the tenacity of Rhodes and his minions and probably realised that his options were cooperation or bloody confrontation, if not with Rhodes then, almost certainly, with the Boers. Lobengula was aware of Zulu history and the inevitability of having to face a massive British army should British subjects die. The Guards had given him a foretaste of that and his envoys to Queen Victoria, still men of influence, had seen it in action at Aldershot. He knew of the fate of his Zulu relative, Cetewayo, who had also sought alliance with the British to forestall Afrikaner encroachment on his domains. The British still found an excuse to invade Zululand and while routed in the famous Battle of Isandhlwana (1879), a huge British army was then sent to Zululand to crush the Zulu nation and depose Cetewayo. Restored to power he was again deposed by rivals and died a fugitive.

  Uncannily, Lobengula’s eventual fate would be a tragic echo of this.

  But in my view the overlooked factor in Lobengula’s story and one which bears on ours is his attitude to gold. Astute and sophisticated in many other ways the King seems genuinely not to have recognised that gold was driving this army of treasure hunters. He must, therefore, have found it very difficult to believe that they were prepared to risk dying for it. Lobengula apparently knew nothing of ancient Ophir and the lost gold mines of Mashonaland and appears to have had little or no interest in the ancient Zimbabwe culture created by the power of gold. Land, slaves, and particularly cattle he would go into battle for, but not gold. This mistake essentially cost him his kingdom.

  It has also been variously suggested that Lobengula, like his ancestors, still had a nomadic streak and he had already made plans to move his kingdom north to the Zambesi. That may indeed have been the purpose of extensive raids made to the far north by his impis throughout the time he was dealing with Rhodes. Be that as it may, for this little band of ‘Pioneers’, soon to be lauded as archetypal Victorian heroes, it was still an enormous gamble to take on Lobengula’s huge, tactically adept army; indeed, I am certain it was only the King’s restraint which saved them. Rhodes may even have assessed this risk and ‘factored in’ the real chance of a devastating Matabele attack. Applicants for the ‘Pioneer Column’ were very deliberately chosen from the sons of the most influential Cape families who would swiftly have demanded revenge and retribution had their scions been massacred by the natives in the north. As with the Zulus, a British army would inevitably have followed such a massacre, just as one did with Cetewayo after Isandhlwana.

  Lobengula saw this threat. By clever manoeuvring through the indunas leading his regiments the young warriors were held in check, although it was often a close call. When, for example, the Bechuanaland contingent tried to turn back, the force returned in a panic after running into 2,000 advancing Matabele.

  On 1 August the Pioneers spotted the lowlying hills which marked the start of the Shona plateau and Selous rode ahead to see if he could find a suitable pass for the wagons: ‘My feelings may be better imagined than described when I say that [having ridden up a promising-looking pass] I saw stretched before me, as far as the eye could see, a wide expanse of open grassy country, and knew that I was looking over the southwestern portion of the high plateau of Mashonaland… . A weight of responsibility, that had at times become almost unbearable, fell from my shoulders and I breathed a sigh of relief.’ They named it Providential Pass.

  On 14 August the column debouched onto the plateau and a halt was called for rest and recreation. Selous told them that they were just a short ride from the Queen of Sheba’s much vaunted palace, and King Solomon’s mines were all around them. Virtually every commercial mining operation these prospectors would now set up would be based on the evidence of gold-bearing reefs from ancient workings. In fact over the next decade it would be recognised that there were all but no worthwhile reefs which had not, to a greater or lesser degree, been worked by the ancients.

  Ophir was theirs.

  They laid the foundations of Fort Victoria, which grew into a thriving little agricultural town by the time I stayed there half a century later. A game of rugby was played and Sir John Willoughby led a party to the ruins and spent the day searching for treasure. None was found, but Sir John was captured by the magic of the place and would return to spend a great deal of time here; indeed, he would be the second European to dig seriously among the ruins.

  One man, The Times correspondent, left the others and made a careful and thoughtful tour, filing the only objective early description of the lost city. Hereafter, Great Zimbabwe would be seen either through the rose-tinted glasses of the Romantics or the clinical gaze of the archaeologists.

  The Ruins themselves lie at the base of a striking and precipitous granite kopje, inhabited by one of the Mashona tribes under a chief called Moghabi.

  The first feature to be noticed on approaching the kopje is the existence of an outer wall, about 4 ft high, running, apparently right round the entire kopje; but owing to the tall grass and dense jungle-like undergrowth it was found impossible to trace this wall more than half a mile.

  Next came indications of a second and inner wall, which it was also impossible to trace for any distance for the same reasons. Then amid a perfect labyrinth of remains of small circular buildings – a mighty maze, but not, apparently, without some plan – southwest of the kopje and 300 yd from its base, we find ourselves confronted with the startling and main feature of these remains – namely a high wall, of circular shape, from 30 ft to 35 ft high, forming a complete enclosure of an area 80 yd in diameter.

  This wall, about 10 ft in thickness at the base, and tapering to about 7 ft or 8 ft at the top is built of small granite blocks, about twice the size of an ordinary brick, beautifully hewn and dressed, laid in perfect even courses, and put together without a single atom of mortar or cement.

  This strange enclosure is entered on its western side by what at first sight appears to be a mere gap in the wall, but which closer examination reveals to be what was once evidently a well-defined, narrow entrance, as shown clearly by the rounded-off courses.

  Inside the building itself, which is most difficult to examine, owing to the dense undergrowth and presence of quantities of trees hundreds of years old, which conceal traces of, seemingly, a series of further circular or elliptical walls, and close to the entrance an outer wall, here 30 ft high, stands a conical shaped tower, or turret 35 ft in height
and 18 ft in diameter at the base, built of the same granite blocks and consisting of solid masonry.

  Lastly, the remaining feature of the building to be touched upon in this brief account is that on the southeast front of the wall, and 20 ft from its base, runs a double zigzag scroll one-third of the distance round, composed of the same-size granite blocks placed in diagonal positions.

  On the kopje and hillside itself, too, there are numerous traces of remains of a similar character, circular buildings wedged in amongst boulders of rocks, walled terraces, at least nine in number; and, built on the very summit, an enormous mass of granite blocks, to be used apparently as a fort, and which owing to the complete absence of any disintegrating forces in this climate, is in an almost perfect state of preservation. The view obtained from the summit of the kopje commands a panorama probably unrivalled in South African scenery.

  What may be the origin, history, and intention of these curious ruins and, in particular, of the large circular building with its cone-shaped turret, is, as far as the members of the present expedition are concerned, a perfect mystery.

  The more scientific and learned element is mute in the presence of these prehistoric remains and stand in silent amazement at their magnitude and solidity. No one, so far, has been bold enough to come forward and suggest some solution of the problem they present, or offer some explanation of the sermons they most infallibly preach.

  One thing is certain, however, that the area covered by the numerous walls and circular buildings points clearly to the existence at some time – perhaps ‘before the ages’ – of a large and semi-civilised population, at a time when slave labour was procurable to an unlimited extent.